Plans have been unveiled to demolish Goodmayes Tesco, but before the wrecking ball comes to town (if it does), here are 10 things you’ll only know if you have been a regular customer there.

1) If you want your fortune read just step out your car. No matter what time of day people will come to you and in exchange for a couple of quid they will tell you how many children you will have (though the number of offspring varies with each visit, cough, apparently).

2) If you are lucky enough to nab a parking space by the pillared arches, your children will always have to touch every single post. If you are not with children it is easy to pretend you are in an espionage movie going to a meet. Theme music playing in your head optional, but the national security of the country is not something you can compromise on.

3) The Tesco was one of the first ‘superstores’ built in the borough to be open 24 hours. Whether it’s Easter, Christmas or Eid, if you need a last minute Easter egg or other gifts, you can find a crowd of people running to the seasonal aisle one minute before the shop shuts. You don’t know the meaning of the word community until you are all helping each other unload gold bunnies from a shopping crate and sharing adrenaline shakes and looks of relief that you have saved your family’s festivities. #We’ve all been there

4) The traffic lights to turn into the store take an eternity to turn green and then when they finally do it feels like they turn red two seconds later. If you are shopping on a Saturday be prepared to factor in half a day - okay, probably a few minutes - to get in.

Only people shopping in Goodmayes for a long time will be able to relate to this list. Photo: Google Maps

5) Getting out and driving towards Goodmayes has the same problem (see above). But if you think the queue to turn onto Barley Lane looks shorter it is only because you will be waiting there for a long time. #Rookie mistake – unless you live off Barley Lane of course.

6) Only old timers will remember feeling like you were an extra in a sci-fi film walking through the cheese aisle. Before the store got refurbished, the cold dairy section was lit with blue lights and you had to enter through plastic flaps. Lots of fun if you are five, not so much when it is 5am in the morning and there is one other person in there with you. Let just say the experience can make you rethink your dedication to Roule or confirm it.

7) Whether you need to play God for the morning, or just like to people watch, if you grab a beverage in the cafe, you can sip your coffee while the worker bees mill about on the shop floor below you putting cereal into their trolleys. They don’t even know you are watching them (insert evil laugh/ reevaluate all your life choices up to this point).

8)Health and safety klaxon: We would never do this and would never advise you to, but it has been brought to our attention that some people in groups have made wagers on the quickest way to get up to the cafe. By lift, stair or escalator, many a family have split up to see who can make it to the great heights of the eatery first (heads up- it is not the lift).

9) Not so much localised to Goodmayes but every big Tesco everywhere. Scanning while you shop and feeling terrible, putting items in your bag before you pay. Every time an employee walks past you make a big thing of showing your scanner/ being a model citizen/ not eyeing up the meat section for too long.

10) If you want to see a cross-section of everyone in Redbridge, head to Tesco in the early hours. Never has a snapshot of every demographic in the borough been so easily caught. From Pyjama clad residents popping out for some milk, the men hanging out by the preschool rides at the front to councillors picking up their weekly shop after a committee meeting. You could write a mini-series of books based on the characters that step foot through the automatic doors. Welcome to Goodmayes.